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Dick, your driving a forklift off of the company dock obviously grabbed some attention. Nothing wrong with that except for the corporate expense. However, expenses mean nothing when profits result. You do know what is expected of you now, right? ... felix

First, I must say this is one of the most interesting threads ever on the Cast Boolit Forum, and it is great to read the opinions of several experienced Keith bullet devotees. So here's my 2 cents: What is it about the Keith bullet that atracts us to it? For me it is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and yet a reasonably good general purpose performer. Now many will tell you that an LBT LFN will generally out-perform a Keith, and is more efficient to boot. However, we, placing importance on good looks and the opinion of the Godfather of the .44 Mag, still shoot a lot of Keith bullets. And apparently, it makes us happy.

Graybeard Post LBT Vrs Keith

There is a long post, some of it heated, on the Greybeard site under 'Ask Veral'.

The bottom line is that Veral even admits after a long discussion that there isn't much difference in performance between the LFN and the Keith style as they both have about the same metplate (65% I believe). He believes his design is more accurate, might be, but I know you have to drive them hard, where as the Keith works well over a large velocity spread.

Normally it is realitively easy to get a 'Good' load out of the Keith and most guns will shoot them well, where as the LBT style is a different story.

Been a looooong time since I stopped by GB. I wish Veral all the sucess in the world, but to bad mouth the "gun rags" while doing his own snake oil salesman act is a bit hypocritical. His religious views are a bit different too, but a mans faith is his own and sacred as far as I'm concerned. I'm just glad he has some faith. As far as his boolit designs go, his salesmanship exceeds Keiths by a long shot. If Elmer had been as blatant as Veral he'd be fried more than he is.

I have one LBT, a 264-90PB RN. Got it cheap. Nice mould, limited usefulness. But it was an LBT and at the time Veral was in prision and his future uncertian. I guess it was a bit of speculation. Some of Veral claims have panned out and some are clearly salesmanship. I do like the quality of his moulds, but will put a good NEI up against a good LBT any day. But I won't sell off my Keith type moulds and buy LBTs jsut 'cuz Veral says his work better. Dick Burns pots on this thread as GB are to the point, you've got to try it yourself and make your own decision as to which type works best for you in your gun.

First, I must say this is one of the most interesting threads ever on the Cast Boolit Forum, and it is great to read the opinions of several experienced Keith bullet devotees. So here's my 2 cents: What is it about the Keith bullet that atracts us to it? For me it is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, and yet a reasonably good general purpose performer. Now many will tell you that an LBT LFN will generally out-perform a Keith, and is more efficient to boot. However, we, placing importance on good looks and the opinion of the Godfather of the .44 Mag, still shoot a lot of Keith bullets. And apparently, it makes us happy.

Well Hardcast, when I decided to purchase my first mould in 1973 I looked at the Lyman catalog and picked the L-358429 because it looked like I thought a bullet should. I didn't know Elmer Keith at that time, never heard of him. So for me, it was looks.

The reason Elmer made the front band wide was to let the boolit touch the end of the chamber at the start of the throat, the boolits being larger in diameter then the throats. Thus there was no jump to reach the throats. Since not all chambers are long enough, his boolits will not chamber in all guns. The thing to do is to find a Keith boolit with the proper band length and diameter to fit your individual gun. To size the boolit to enter the throats will not give you the same results as Elmer got. I can't say it is bad for a boolit to fit through the throats because I make my moulds that way and get extreme accuracy.
Someday I will make some oversized boolits to see what happens.
This is a very interesting discussion. There are so many versions of Elmer's boolit and some shoot great and others don't, depending on the gun.
I can understand why so many are different because of differences in chambers and throats. It would not be good for a mould maker to have his boolit only fit several guns.

44man, one of the best shooting bullet I've cast was a Lyman 429421 with a round lube groove and a front band that was half the width of the middle & base bands. With 21 grs. of 2400 and a CCI 350 primer it was one of the most accurate loads I've fired.

Lah, I agree because I also shot thousands of those myself. I was only giving the reason why Elmer designed his boolit that way, not that it is the only way. It is an interesting concept and deserves looking into though. Since I make my own moulds, someday I will design one to fit my gun.
I have tried other Keith style boolits over the years and none shot real bad, but some were a lot better then others. The 429421 was and is a great boolit. Sadly, I sold the mould years ago when I went totally into archery and muzzle loaders. Of course, that didn't last long because I found IHMSA and replaced all of my guns and loading equipment.